To ask, what's one item that you didn't realise was expensive until you became an adult?

[AvocadoHo]

Mine is toilet roll and cheese! 🙈

Yes, houses - whenever we were out and about me and my sister would point to some lovely detached cottage/mansion and say 'I'll have that one when I'm grown up'. Blissful innocence.

Happy with our little flat but I do sometimes still wistfully covet that lovely honey coloured stone house with its magnolia trees near the park...

Admission tickets.

A 2 hour slot to a garden - 70quid for a family of four.
A day at a mid range local theme park - 120quid for a family of four.
The local farm zoo - 50quid for a family of four.

Tea & coffee

Glad some one has already mentioned kitchen bins. Mum and I both really need new ones so this has been a regular conversation of late. It’s obscene and Brabantia don’t last a bloody lifetime, do they? If they did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.......

The joy of nice bog roll comes when the DC leave home .

Absolutely @BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz days out that require admission tickets are so bloody expensive. I didn’t fully realise until lockdown how much we were spending on taking the kids here and there. Definitely won’t be falling back into that habit.

Cushions!!

@TheHateIsNotGood

*Yesterday 22:32TheHateIsNotGood

Wood, nails and building things - life isn't built by 'meccano' and 'lego' apparently....*

Talking of Lego .. £££££££???

Roofs.

I rather naively thought you had one put on top of your house and that was it. All the upkeep and maintenance is SO expensive.

If reincarnation is a thing, I'm going to set up a scaffolding hire company in my next life.

Ratonastick: Brabantia do have an amazing returns policy though - our 10 year old bin stopped working because the touch pad thingy to open the bin was broken - they replaced the top of the bin no questions asked!

Paripale. This is interesting new information and could change everything.......

A mattress

Children, particularly babies and teenagers

Yes to a lot of stuff on here. I'd add dentistry. Through illness I've lost teeth and have week teeth, but I can't afford to do anything about it.

Kids. I thought creche was expensive until we started going on days out after things opened up!

Council tax.
Glasses and contact lenses.
Train tickets.
Decent soft furnishings/bedding.

Birthday cards. Bought one for DH today and it was £4!!

Nursery fees.

Kitchen roll

I think the food shop in general. Didn’t think much of it when I was a kid and mum was doing all the budgeting and shopping but now I’m doing it for my kids I realise it really adds up x

Heating. Thank god I hate being warm now so the heating stays off in my house unless it’s Baltic.

Doing anything as a family. I live independently from the age of 18 so was aware of the cost of things, and logically it's pretty obvious that more people to pay for = more expensive. But it didn't really hit me until I was a parent exactly how expensive even a fairly cheap treat/day out/meal out is when you have to pay for the whole family. I now understand why my parents refused to buy takeaways whenever we asked!

Decent washing powder
Mattresses
Holidays
Weetabix
Gas
Electricity
Petrol
Cars
Houses

Basically life is expensive

Sofas, actually any furniture, Christmas decorations, CHILDRENS TOYS are ridiculously expensive. Yeah it's everything.

Le Creuset, mattresses